My old colleague at The Athletic had a recent tweet with some eye-opening stats.
Since Kevin Pillar made the Sox roster out of spring, and the front office spent more time assessing his value on the open market than they ever bargained for, there is definitely some cruel irony in the worst offense in baseball managing to miss out on his surprising late-career heater. But Pillar is also a 35-year-old with a career 88 wRC+ and his role was quite directly handed over to Tommy Pham, so it's not exactly cause for mass firings in the analytics department.
A source for deeper "what might have been?" questions was across town in the Wrigley Field visitor's clubhouse this past week, where a 30-year-old Reynaldo López has the third-lowest ERA (1.54) among pitchers who have logged more than 45 innings this season. At eight starts and 46⅔ innings, López is not a qualified starter for the 29-18 Braves, because despite having two seasons over 30 starts and 180 innings in his career, López a reliever conversion project and Atlanta has been giving him extended rest between starts whenever possible.
It's a project that Jhilaris López insisted upon.
"The only one who was very confident in me starting was my wife," López said via interpreter. "She would tell my agent, 'We've got to look for teams that are looking to have him be a starter.' And I would tell her 'Don't worry about that stuff, I'll be a reliever, it doesn't matter.'"
Seven long years ago, harnessing López's upper-90s fastball in the starting rotation was a central project of the White Sox rebuild, with many evaluators viewing him as a more likely starter than Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech or Dylan Cease by mid-2017. But an older and wiser version of that same man doesn't make it sound like it was ever the easiest task.
"Being able to pitch in the bullpen helped me a lot and it taught me so much about pitching," López said via interpreter. "When I was 23, really all I was focused on was throwing hard, striking everyone out and maybe going six innings. Making the transition to the bullpen, you have that one outing, one inning, one chance to be effective and get your outs. It taught me how to take very outing and really examine it pitch-by-pitch, batter-by-batter and game plan a little bit better, and adjust better."
In hindsight, many of López's improvements feel like they came too late for the Sox to reap the maximum benefit. He had surgery on his corneas in May of 2021 to correct a condition that was often complicating his ability to see signs from his catcher, making us reporters wonder how much López's past self-criticism for "lack of focus," was actually literal. Then of course PitchCom made the problem entirely irrelevant a year later, right as López was emerging as key late-inning cog in the bullpen.
Before that 2021 season, López worked with Sox pitching coach Ethan Katz to shorten the arm swing in his delivery, with the goal of making it more consistent and repeatable. His struggles the previous two seasons justified a bold change, but such a significant mechanical adjustment meant his results got worse before they got better. López saw his velocity back up to the low-90s as he piled up awful numbers in Triple-A. He slid into a swingman role for a division-winning team in the second half of the season when the tide finally turned.
While López was initially going to stretch out in spring of 2022, those plans fizzled sometime after Garrett Crochet blew out his elbow and Craig Kimbrel was traded on the same day. By the start of the 2023 season he was effectively the team's closer.
Were he still with the Sox this season, Katz would have been in favor of giving López another try in the rotation, having assured him the door was never closed on starting again. But it was the Braves that came calling with $30 million guaranteed this offseason, and the compact delivery they saw on video quickly suggested they had landed a bargain on a starter, rather than overpaid for a reliever.
"He's got a chance because his delivery is very simple, and he throws lots of strikes," Braves pitching coach Rick Kranitz said of his first impressions. "It's simple and repeatable. If he does get out of whack a little bit, he should be able to reel it back in and get back on track because it's fairly simple. I was actually surprised with how easy it was."
"I want to thank Ethan because he got the ball in motion there," López said via interpreter.
But here is where López's accumulated knowledge of self looms large. The slow curveball that he reintroduced -- almost exclusively to lefties -- to the tune of a .188 batting average against it? Kranitz said bringing it back was an idea López presented in spring training, insisting it was necessary. His slider has become more vertical with less sweep, with a depth that allows it to play to batters of either hand. Moving into the rotation has seen López's average fastball velocity drop three ticks to 95.2 mph, but if you watched his most recent duel with Dylan Cease, López reached back for 98 mph as often, if not more, than his counterpart.
"Quite frankly his command of his fastball is phenomenal," Kranitz said. "He's able to minimize pitch count and probably the most important thing that I've noticed is he reaches back into the reliever López. When things get a little testy, you'll see the 98s or you'll see him get after it even more. The way relievers do, right? So he has that to lean on when something's going on, but he also has the starting experience of what he knew he needed to do starting. You put them all together, and you've got a pretty good starter."
There's a question of how long all this will last. Statcast's xERA has López at merely 3.60, while FIP has him at 2.90, though both figures would more than validate the effort. López says he always prepares in the offseason to comfortably throw more innings than he's slated for, but the Braves' concern for his stamina is indicated in their handling of him.
Not to mention, being in an environment where López's availability in October is as relevant -- if not more -- to the club as a strong first two months, is its own reward.
"The positive energy here is contagious, it definitely has an effect," López said via interpreter. "From the second I arrived in spring training, I was welcomed with open arms. Just the way they embraced me from Day 1 it helped me with my confidence, for sure. The vibes and the positive energy definitely helped out, and obviously the dynamic and relationship I have with our pitching coach Kranny, all these things, the welcoming environment, definitely helped spark that confidence in myself."
It's obviously true that the White Sox and López could and should have gotten more out of their time together, as his most productive season was for a 100-loss team in 2018. But having watched and spoken to him for going on eight years, the most appealing version of López is this one: still young, healthy, confident enough to be able to apply all the lessons that the ups and downs of the past decade have taught him.
To get this López, the White Sox could simply do what the Braves did. They could have paid for it.
